Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Pressurised To Reconsider Plans To Allow Teenagers On Its Metaverse

US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey have written to Zuckerberg urging him to abandon these plans due to potential risks to young users.

Meta suffered a significant operating loss of $13.7 billion for its Reality Labs division in 2022.

Source : Getty

Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder and CEO of Facebook-parent Meta, has faced pressure from US Senators to reconsider plans to allow teenagers on its metaverse platforms. Meta is reportedly considering allowing users aged 13 to 17 to access its social virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, in an effort to grow its VR business.

However, as reported by TechCrunch, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey have written to Zuckerberg urging him to abandon these plans due to potential risks to young users.

The senators argue that any strategy to encourage young people to enter a digital space with potential dangers should not be motivated solely by profit.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, suffered a significant operating loss of $13.7 billion for its Reality Labs division in 2022, causing a setback for its AR-VR and metaverse ambitions.

The company's Q4 revenue for the Reality Labs segment was down 17 percent due to reduced sales of its Quest 2 product.

Currently, Horizon Worlds is only available to users aged 18 and over, but the planned launch for teenagers could occur as early as this month. Internal documents have also revealed that Meta is struggling with technical issues, user disinterest, and a lack of clarity about what it will take to succeed in the metaverse project.

Furthermore, Zuckerberg has announced that the social networking giant is working towards building artificial intelligence (AI) tools for its apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. The company now has a product team that is dedicated to building tools powered by AI.

"We're creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area. We're starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology into all of our different products. In the short term, we'll focus on building creative and expressive tools," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.